Hexwood

As she was carrying it to the table, Mum hurried through from the shop, alerted by the smell. “You’re feeling better?”

“Oh, I am!” said Ann. “So better that I’m going out as soon as I’ve eaten this.”

Mum looked from the mounded frying pan to the window. “The weather’s not—” But the hail had gone by then. Bright sunlight was slicing through the smoke from Ann’s fry-up and the sky was deep, clear blue. Bang goes Mum’s excuse, Ann thought, grinning as she wolfed down her mushrooms. Nothing had ever tasted so good! “Well, you’re not to overdo it,” Mum said. “Remember you’ve been poorly for a long time. You’re to wrap up warm and be back for lunch.”

“I shall obey, o great fusspot,” Ann said, with her mouth full.

“Lunch, or I shall call the police,” said Mum. “And don’t wear jeans – they’re not nearly warm enough. The weather at this time of year—”

“Fuss-great-potest,” Ann said lovingly, beginning on the bacon. Pity there had been no room in the pan for fried bread. “I’m not a baby. Two layers of thermal underwear satisfy you?”

“Since when have you had–? Oh, I can see you’re better!” Mum said happily. “A vest anyway, to please me.”

“Vests,” Ann said, quoting a badge that Martin often wore, “are what teenagers wear when their mothers feel cold. You’re cold. You keep that shop freezing.”

“You know we have to keep the veg fresh,” Mum retorted, and she went back into the shop laughing.

The sun felt really hot. When she finished eating, Ann went upstairs and dressed as she saw fit: the tight woolly skirt, so that Mum would see she was not wearing jeans, a summery top, and her nice anorak over that, zipped right up so that she looked wrapped up. Then she scudded down and through the shop, calling, “Bye, everyone!” before either of her parents could get loose from customers and interrogate her.

“Don’t go too far!” Dad’s powerful voice followed her.

“I won’t!” Ann called back. Truthfully. She had it all worked out. There was no point trying to work the device that opened that gate. If she tried to climb it, someone would notice and stop her. Besides, if everyone who went into the farm never came out, it would be stupid to go in there and vanish too. Mum and Dad really would throw fits. But there was nothing to stop Ann climbing a tree in Banners Wood and taking a look over the wall from there.

Get a close look at that van, if it’s still there, the King agreed. I’m rather anxious to know who owns it.

Ann frowned and gave a sort of nod. There was something about this weighing-scale logo. It made her four people talk to her when she had not actually started to imagine them. She didn’t like that. It made her wonder again whether she was mad. She went slowly down Wood Street and even more slowly past the expensive car parked in the bay. There were drifts of half-thawed hailstones under it still. As she passed behind it, Ann trailed a finger along the car’s smooth side. It was cold and wet and shiny and hard – and very – very real. This was not just a fever-dream she had imagined in the mirror. She had seen three men arrive here this morning.

She turned down the passage between the houses that led to the wood. It was beautiful down there, hot and steamy. Mum and her vests! Melting hailstones flashed rainbow colours from every blade of grass along the path. And the wood had gone quite green while she had been in bed – in the curious way woods do in early spring, with the bushes and lower branches a bright emerald thickness, while the upper boughs of the bigger trees were still almost bare, and only a bit swollen in their outlines. It smelt warm, and keen with juices, and the sunlight made the green transparent.

Ann had walked for some minutes in the direction of the farm wall when she realised there was something wrong with the wood. Not wrong exactly. It still stretched around her in peaceful arcades of greenness. Birds sang. Moss grew shaggy on the path under her trainers. There were primroses on the bank beside her.

“Here, wait a minute!” she said.

The paths in Banners Wood were always muddy, with Coke rings trodden into them. And if a primrose had dared show its face there, it would have been picked or trampled on the spot. And she should have reached the farm wall long ago. Even more important, she should have been able to see the houses on the other side of the trees by now.

Ann strained her eyes to where those houses should have been. Nothing. Nothing but trees or green springing hawthorn and, in the distance, a bare tree carrying load upon load of tiny pink flowers. Ann took the path towards that tree, with her heart banging. Such a tree had never been seen in Banners Wood before. But she told herself she was mistaking it for the pussy willow on the other side of the stream.

She knew she was not, even before she came up beside the big leaden-looking container half-buried in the bank beyond the primroses. She could see far enough from beside this container to know that the wood simply went on, and on, and on, beyond the pink tree. She stopped and looked at the container. People often did throw rubbish in the wood. Martin had had wonderful fun with an old pram someone had dumped here. This thing looked as if someone had thrown away a whole freezer – one of the big kind like a chest with a lid. It had been there a long time. Not only was it half-buried in the bank. Its outside had rotted and peeled to a dull grey. Wires came out of it in places, rusty and broken. It looked – well – not really like a freezer, quite.

Mum’s voice rang warnings in Ann’s ears. “It’s dirty – you don’t know where it’s been – something could be rotting inside it – it could be nuclear!”

It did look like a nuclear-waste container.

What do you think? Ann asked her four imaginary friends.

To her great surprise, none of them answered. She had to imagine their voices replying. The Boy would say, Open it! Take a look! You’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t. She imagined the others agreeing, but more cautiously, and the King adding, But be careful!

Maybe it was the solution to the Hexwood Farm mystery – the thing that had fetched all those men to call on young Harrison, the thing he thought so well of himself for guarding. Ann scrambled up the bank, put the heels of her hands firmly into the crack under the lid of the container, and heaved. The lid sprang up easily, and then went on rising of its own accord until it was standing upright at the back of the box.

Ann had not expected it to be that easy. It sent her staggering back down the bank to the path. There, she looked at the open container and could not move for sheer terror.

A corpse was rising up out of it.

The head appeared first, a face that looked like a skull except for long straggles of yellow-white hair and beard. Next, a hand clutched the edge of the box, a hand white-yellow with enormous bone knobs of knuckles and – disgustingly – inch-long yellow fingernails. Ann gave a little whimper at this, but still she could not move. Then there was heaving. A gaunt bone shoulder appeared. Breath whistled from the lips of the skull. And the corpse dragged itself upright, unfolding a long, long body grown all over with coarse tangles of whitish hair. Absolutely indecent! Ann thought, as the long spindly legs rose above her, shaking, and shaking loose the fragments of rotted cloth wound round the creature’s loins. It was very weak, this corpse. For an instant, Ann saw it as almost pathetic. And it was not quite a skeleton. Skin covered it, even the face, which was still far too like a skull for comfort.

The face turned. The eyes, large, sunk and pale under a grey-yellow hedge of eyebrow, looked straight at Ann. The skull lips moved. The thing said something – croaked something – words in a strange language.

It had seen her. It was too much. It spoke. Ann ran. She scrambled into a turn and ran, and her hurtling trainers slipped beneath her. She was down on the moss of the path, hardly aware of the sharp stone that met her knee, up again in the same breath, and running as fast as her legs could take her, away down the path. A corpse that walked, looked, spoke. A vampire in a lead chest – a radioactive vampire! She knew it was coming after her. Fool to keep to the path! She veered up the bank and ran on, crunching and galloping on squashy lichen, leaping among brambles, tearing through strident green thickets, with dead branches cracking and exploding under her feet. Her breath screamed. Her chest ached. She was ill. Fool. She was making so much noise. It could follow her just by listening.

“What shall I do – what shall I do?” she whimpered as she ran.

Her legs were giving way. After all that time in bed she was almost as weak as the vampire-thing. Her left knee hurt like crazy. She glanced down as she crashed through some flat brown briars to see bright red blood streaming down her shin and into her sock. There was blood in the brambles she stood in. It could track her by smell too.

“What shall I do?”

The sensible thing was to climb a tree.

“Oh, I couldn’t!” Ann gasped.

The creature croaked again, somewhere quite near.

Ann found strength she did not know she had. It sent her to the nearest climbable tree and swarming up it like a mad girl. Bark bit the insides of her legs. Her fingers scraped and clawed, breaking most of the fingernails she had been so proud of. She heard her nice anorak tear. But still she climbed, until she was able to thrust her head through a bush of smaller branches and scramble astride a strong bough, safe and high, with her back against the trunk and her hair raked into hanks across her face.

If it comes up, I can kick it down! she thought, and leant back with her eyes shut.

It was croaking somewhere below, even nearer, to her right.

Ann’s eyes sprang open. She stared down in weak horror at the path and the chest embedded in the bank beyond it. The lid had shut again. But the creature was still outside it, standing in the path almost below her, staring down at the scarlet splatter of blood Ann’s knee had made when she fell on the stone. She had run in a circle like a panicked animal.

Don’t look up! Don’t look up! she prayed, and kept very still.

It did not look up. It was busy examining its taloned hands, then putting those hands up to feel the frayed bush of its hair and beard. Ann got the feeling it was very, very puzzled. She watched it take hold of the shreds of cloth wrapped round its skinny hips and pull off a piece to look at. It shook its head. Then, in a mad, precise way, it laid the strip of rag across its left shoulder and croaked out some more words. This time, the sound was less of a croak and more like a voice.

Then – despite all the rest, Ann still had trouble believing her eyes – the creature grew itself clothes. The lower rags went expanding downwards in two khaki waterfalls of thick cloth, to make narrow leggings and then brown supple-looking boots. At the same time the strip of rag on the corpse’s shoulder was chasing downwards too, tumbling and spreading into a calf-length robe-thing, wide and pleated, the colour of camelhair. Ann’s lips parted almost in an exclamation as she saw the colour. She watched, then, almost as if she expected it, the long hair and beard turn the same camelhair colour and shrink away. The beard shrank right away into the man’s chin, leaving his face more skull-shaped than ever, but the hair halted just below his ears. He completed himself by strapping a broad belt round his waist – it had a knife and a pouch attached to it – and slinging a sort of rolled blanket across his left shoulder, where he carefully fastened it with straps. After that, he gave a mutter of satisfaction and went to the edge of the path, where he drew the knife and cut himself a stout stick from the tree nearest the leaden chest.

Even before he moved, Ann was nearly sure who he was. The long strolling strides with which he walked across the path made her quite certain. He was the tallest of the three men who had come in that car, the one who had made the gate open, the one in the odd camelhair coat. He was still wearing that coat, after a fashion, she thought, except he had made it into a robe.

He came back to the path, carrying the stick. It was no longer a stick, but a staff, old and polished and carved with curious signs. He looked up at Ann and croaked out a remark at her.

She recoiled against the tree trunk. Oh my God! He knew I was there all along! And now she was the indecent one. Comes of climbing trees in a tight skirt. The skirt was rolled up round her waist. He must be looking straight up at her pants. And her long, helpless legs dangling down on either side of the branch.

The strange man below coughed, displeased with his voice, still staring up at Ann. His eyes were light, inside deep hollows. His eyebrows met over his nose, in one eyebrow shaped like a hawk flying. He was a weird-looking man, even if you met him in the ordinary way, walking down the street. You’d think, Ann thought, you’d run into the Grim Reaper.

“I’m sorry,” she said, high-voiced with fear. “I – I can’t understand a word you’re saying – and I don’t want to.”

He looked startled. He thought. Gave another cough. “I apologise,” he said. “I was using the wrong language. What I said was, I’ve no intention of hurting you. Won’t you come down?”

They all say that! Mum’s warning voice said in Ann’s head. “No, I won’t,” Ann said. “And if you try to climb up I shall kick you.” And she wondered frantically, How do I get out of this? I can’t sit up here all day!

“Well, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” asked the man. As Ann drew breath to say that she did mind, very much, he added quickly, “I’ve never been so puzzled in my life. What is this place?”

Now he was getting used to talking, he had quite a pleasant deep voice, with a slight foreign accent. Swedish? Ann wondered. And he did have every reason to be puzzled. There seemed no harm in telling him what little she knew. “What do you want to ask?” she said cautiously.

He cleared his throat again. “Can you tell me where we are? Where this is?” He gestured round at the green distances of the wood.

“Well,” Ann said, “it ought to be the wood just beside Hexwood Farm, but it – seems to have gone bigger.” As he seemed quite bewildered by this, she added, “But it’s no use asking me why it’s bigger. I can’t understand it either.”

The man clicked his tongue and stared up at her impatiently. “I know about that. I could feel I was working with a field just now. Something near by is creating a whole set of paratypical extensions—”

“You what?” said Ann.

“You’d probably call it,” he said thoughtfully, “casting a spell.”

“I would not!” Ann said indignantly. She might look absurd and indecent sitting dangling in this tree, but that didn’t mean she was a moron! “I’m far too old to think anything so silly.”

“Apologies,” he said. “Then perhaps the best way to explain it is as quite a large hemisphere of a certain kind of force that has power to change reality. Does that help you?”

“Sort of” Ann admitted.

“Good,” he said. “Now please explain where and what is Hexwood Farm.”

“It’s the old farm on our housing estate,” Ann said. He looked bewildered again. The one eyebrow gathered in over his nose, and he leant on his staff to stare about him. Ann thought he seemed wobbly and ill. Not surprising. “It’s not a farm any more, just a house,” she explained. “About forty miles from London.” He shook his head helplessly. “In England, Europe, Earth, the solar system, the universe. You must know!” Ann said irritably. “You came here in a car this morning. I saw you – going into the farm with two other men!”

“Oh no,” he said, sounding faint and tired. “You’re mistaken. I’ve been in stass-sleep for centuries, for breaking the Reigners’ ban.” He turned and pointed a startlingly long finger at the chest half-buried in the bank. “Now you have to believe that. You were standing here, where I am now, when I came out. I saw you.”

This was hard to deny, but Ann was sure enough of her facts to try, leaning earnestly down from her branch. “I know – I mean, I did see you – but I saw you before that, early this morning, walking in the road in modern clothes. I swear it was you! I knew by the way you walked.”

The man below firmly shook his head. “No, it was not me you saw. It must have been a descendant of mine. I took care to have many descendants. It was – was one good way of breaking – that unjust ban.” He put a hand to his forehead. Ann could see he was coming over queer. The staff was wobbling under his hand.

“Look,” she said kindly, “if this – this sphere of force can change reality, couldn’t it have changed you, like it changed the wood?”

“No,” he said. “There are some things that can’t be changed. I am Mordion. I am from a distant world and I was sent here under a ban.” He used his staff to help him to the bank, where he sat down and covered his face shakily with one hand.

It reminded Ann of the weak way she had felt only yesterday. She was torn between sympathy for him and urgent worry about herself. Probably he was not sane. And her legs were going numb and needlish, the way legs do if they are left to dangle. “Why don’t you,” she said, thinking of the way she had wolfed down that pan of food, “get the force to change reality and sent you something to eat? You must be hungry. If I’m right, you haven’t eaten anything since it got light this morning. If you’re right, you must be bloody ravenous!”

Mordion brought his skull of a face out of his hand. “What sound sense!” He raised his staff, then paused and looked up at Ann. “Would you like some food too?”

“No thanks. I have to be home for lunch,” Ann said primly. While he was eating his boars head, or whatever he got his thingummy field to send him, Ann was planning to slide down this tree and run – run like mad, in a straight line this time.

“As you please.” Mordion made a sharp, angular gesture with his staff. Before he had half completed the movement, something square and white was following the gesture in the air. He brought the staff down in a smooth arc and the square thing glided down with it and landed on the bank. “Hey presto!” Mordion said, looking up at Ann with a large smile.

Ann quite forgot to slide down the tree. The square thing was a plastic tray divided into compartments and covered with transparent film. That was the first amazing thing. The second amazing thing was that some of the food inside was bright blue. The third and most amazing thing, which really held Ann riveted to her branch, was that smile Mordion gave her. If a skull smiles, you expect something mirthless, with too many teeth in it. Mordion’s smile was nothing like that. It was full of amusement and humour and friendship. It was glowing. It changed his face to something that made Ann’s breath catch. She felt almost weak enough, seeing it, to topple off her branch. It was the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.

“It’s – that’s aeroplane food!” she said, and felt her face going red because of that smile.

Mordion stripped the transparent top off the tray. Steam rose into the dappled sunlight, and so did a most appetising smell. “Not really,” he said. “It’s a stass-tray.”

“What’s the blue stuff?” Ann could not help asking.

“Yurov keranip,” he answered. His mouth was full of it. He had detached a spoon-thing from the side of the tray and was eating as if it was indeed centuries since he last ate. “A sort of root,” he added, fetching a bread roll out and using it to help the spoon-thing. “This is bread. The pinkish things are collops from Iony in barinda sauce. The green is – I forget – a kind of seaweed, I think, fried, and the yellow is den beans in cheese. Underneath, there should be a dessert. I hope so, because I’m hungry enough to eat the tray if there isn’t. I might spare you a taste if you care to come down, though it would be a wrench.”

“No thanks,” Ann said. But since her legs were going really numb, she struggled one knee on to the branch and managed to pull herself up until she was standing, leaning against the tree trunk, with one arm draped comfortably over a higher branch. Like that, she could wriggle her skirt back down and feel almost respectable. The blood still streaked down her shin, but it was brown and shiny by then.

There was a dessert under the hot food. Ann watched, slightly wistfully, as Mordion lifted the top tray out as you do with a box of chocolates. Underneath, it looked like ice cream, as mysteriously cold as the top course was hot. I am in a field of paratypical thingummies, Ann thought. Anything is possible. That ice cream looked luscious. There was a cup of hot drink beside it.

Mordion tossed the spoon into the empty trays and took the cup in both hands. “Ah,” he said, supping comfortably. “That’s better. Now, I want to ask you something else. But, first, what’s your name?

“Ann,” said Ann.

He looked up at her, puzzled again. “Really? I thought – somehow – it would be a longer name than that.”

“Ann Stavely, if you insist,” said Ann. She was certainly not going to tell him that her middle name was, hatefully, Veronica.

Mordion bowed to her over his steaming cup. “Mordion Agenos. This is what I want to ask you – will you help me to make another attempt to break the Reigners’ ban?”

“It depends,” Ann said. “What are rainers?”

“Those who rule,” said Mordion. His face set into the grimmest of deaths-heads. Above the steaming cup it looked terrible, particularly surrounded by the bright spring woodland, full of the green of life and the chirping of nesting birds. “There are five of them and, though they live light years across the galaxy, they rule every inhabited world, including this one.”

“What – even inside this thingummy field?” Ann asked.

Mordion thought. “No,” he said. “No. I am almost sure not. This seems to be one reason why it came into my head to try to break their ban again.”

“Are the Reigners very terrible?” Ann asked, watching his face.

“Terrible?” Mordion said. She saw hatred and horror working under his grimness. “That’s too small a word. But yes. Very terrible.”

“And what’s this ban they put on you?”

“Exile. And I am not to go against the Reigners in any way.” Looking up at her from under his long wings of eyebrow, Mordion had a sinister unearthliness. Ann shivered as he said, “You see, I’m of Reigner blood too. I could defeat them if I was free. I nearly did, twice, long ago. That was why they put me in stass.”

But that’s not true! Ann thought. Humour him, or I’ll never get out of this tree. “So how do you want me to help?”

“Give me permission to make use of your blood,” Mordion said.

“What?” Ann backed against the trunk of the tree, and pressed further against it when Mordion pointed to the place in the path where she had fallen over. It had not dried up like the blood on her leg. Down there it was bright red and moist. There seemed to be an awful lot of it too, spreading luridly among the green mosses and splashed scarlet on the white stone that had cut her. It looked almost as if something had been killed there.

“The field is waiting to work with it,” Mordion told her. “It was the first thing I noticed after you ran away.”

“What for? How?” Ann said. “I don’t agree to anything!”

“Perhaps if I explain.” Mordion stood up and strolled over to a spot just under Ann’s branch. She felt sick, and tried to back even further. She could see the buds on the end of her branch shaking in front of Mordion’s upturned face. She felt as if she was making the whole tree shake. “What was done in the past,” Mordion said, “was to get round the Reigners’ ban by breeding a race of men and women who were not under the ban and could go against the Reigners—”